Keeping the Sound Down
by leradny
Summary: You'll never guess what this is about. [RikuKairi.]
1. Chapter One: Saturnine

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts.

**Perpetrators of this Abuse:** The community 50scenes on livejournal.

**Notes:** ...As if I didn't have enough on my plate, what with Riku-Style and Personal Soundtrack.

-  
**Saturnine**

Kairi puts the papers down with a look of disbelief.

"_Lead poisoning? _How did you get _lead poisoning_?"

"..." Riku shrugs noncommitedly.

She presses her fingers to his forehead and worries, forehead wrinkling slightly.

He takes her hand gently and places it back at her side. "I'm going to be fine. Don't worry."

-  
The next day, without looking where he's going, Riku finds Kairi at the other side of the school with Sora and calls, "Kairi!"

He grins as they turn to him.

"I don't have lead poisoning! It was a mistake!"

She runs across the quad and tackles him. "Oh, thank god! I was worried about you!"

Sora drifts over confusedly. "Um..."

"What are you waiting for?" Riku demands, holding one arm out for his friend and holding Kairi with the other.

The brown-haired boy tries: "...Yay, you don't have lead poisoning?"

"_Get over here!_"

-  
**Notes:** I saw not one, but _two_ meanings for saturnine when I looked it up on a dictionary site. Two! _Whole! Meanings!_

1. Gloomy; taciturn; sullen; melancholy.

2. The state in which one is suffering from the effects of lead poisoning.

I sense your confusion. I sense a question starting with "Why" and ending with "did you pick that definition?"

I sense all of those things and to that I say:

_Of course I picked the lead poisoning scare!_ It's Riku! It's Kairi! It's the ambiguity of the word 'saturnine!' Sure, you could write about Riku being melancholy, or even Kairi being melancholy, but this is the person who take totally serious-sounding prompts and twists them into crack because she is crazy like that! Leradny! Raedyn L., occasionally!

I have crunched the numbers and forty percent of all my cumulative writing about Riku and Kairi is _crack_. It is statistics for dummies, people. It is my own twisted brain crying out to me to _please_, break the tension _somehow_ because I am not a drama queen and writing like that all the time exhausts me, completely. I need a release! It manifests itself on the other side of the spectrum--incredibly ludicrous crack! And usually it's about Riku's hair! (???)

Have you noticed that? Check both my previous stories to see! You'll find it! Seriously!

It is the unwillingness of my conscience as a writer to succumb to a cliche cop-out on my first prompt from my first challenge about a pairing I am absolutely crazy about! My OTP to end all OTPs!!

RIKUKAIRI DOES NOT DESERVE CLICHE, DAMMIT! BECAUSE IT IS **NOT** A CLICHE PAIRING!

...

...I am very nervous about writing fifty chapters.

Excuse me while I go and hide from my mostly-empty prompt list.


	2. Chapter Two: Worthy

**Title:** Worthy  
**Author:** leradny  
**Characters:** Riku, Kairi (pairing)  
**Prompt:** #29: Overdrive  
**Word Count:** 217  
**Rating:** G  
**Summary:** Riku washes his hands. A lot.  
**Warnings:** This is cliche. But I've written it as well as I could. Trying is not cliche, is it?  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts.  
**  
**-**  
Worthy.**  
-

Once he gets home...

He washes his hands about a zillion times, but he just can't get the stench out.

...once he gets home.

The blood is there to stay on him. It pumps on him like a second skin, the scabs of dried platelets all over his _hands_.

The hearts...

You don't stop seeing them when you've got a blindfold on. All of them--hearts. Pumping. At a million different rates with a million different faces smiling at him--crying, laughing, singing, enraptured...

What's strange is that she doesn't seem to care and she touches his shoulder like she's got no reason not to.

Nothing... on his skin.

Nothing...

And he can't wash the guilt away, ever.

He wants...

To be...

Free...?

No.

No, no, no, no, no--_this_ is what he wants:

He wants to get rid of this feeling--like there's something _on_ him. Something he can't wash away no matter how much he swims in the chlorinated pools or salty sea. It makes him feel... dirty.

All.

The.

Time.

**_All the time!_**

And he wonders when he's going to stop washing his hands and get on with his life, but for now...

He'll just live with it.

Live with it, until he can summon up the guts to get over it.

And then he's going to finally feel clean.


End file.
